How The Irishman Will Be Different From Goodfellas, According To Martin Scorsese

After tackling faith and Catholicism in Silence, acclaimed director Martin Scorsese will be returning to a subject matter that he's pretty well-known for: the mafia. Scorsese's Goodfellas is not only one of the best films he's ever made, but it's also one -- if not THE best -- gangster movie ever made about the mafia. So, we should all be excited that he's making The Irishman with Robert De Niro in the starring role. Having made Goodfellas, there are bound to be a comparison between the two films, but Scorsese recently opened up about how the films will be fairly different from each other.

In a large profile piece, Martin Scorsese chatted with The Independent briefly on his upcoming film The Irishman, a gangster movie about a hitman (a technologically de-aged Robert De Niro) that will be released through Netflix. Scorsese is no slouch in this department, having made Casino, The Departed, and of course, Goodfellas, which always seems to be on TV. When asked how The Irishman will be different from Goodfellas, here's what Scorsese had to say:

I think this is different, I think it is. I admit that there are -- you know, Goodfellas and Casino have a certain style that I created for them -- it's on the page in the script actually. Putting Goodfellas together was almost like an afterthought, at times I was kind of rushing, I felt I'd already done it because I'd played it all out in terms of the camera moves and the editing and that sort of thing. The style of the picture, the cuts, the freeze-frames, all of this was planned way in advance, but here it's a little different. The people are also older in The Irishman, it's certainly more about looking back, a retrospective so to speak of a man's life and the choices that he's had to make.

The gist of Martin Scorsese's comment seems to be that The Irishman will be less meticulously planned than Goodfellas was, or at least it won't be done in quite the same style. But the two are also different on a thematic level. The Irishman is more about the past and dealing with one's decisions, while Goodfellas was something of a glorification of the past (at least as far as the main character is concerned). The Irishman tells the story of mafia-tied fifties hitman Frank Sheeran who, after becoming desensitized with death after committing war crimes in World War II, becomes a successful hitman back in the states.

The Irishman stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci and is expected to be released sometime in 2018. For more on the movie, make sure to check back in with CineaBlend for any and all future updates.